Lantern Festival delicacies include glutinous rice balls, Yuanxiao, Yuanxiao tea, jiaozi, jujube cakes, noodles and bad soup. Tangyuan, also known as "Tangtuan" and "Floating Zi Yuan", is a traditional food eaten by southerners during the Lantern Festival. According to legend, Tangyuan originated in the Song Dynasty. At that time, in Mingzhou (now Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province), a round cooked food was developed, which was filled with black sesame seeds and pig fat, with a little sugar and glutinous rice flour outside, and could be eaten after cooking. This is also the original glutinous rice balls. Because of its round shape, people gradually give it the meaning of round and round.

In the north, it is very popular to eat Yuanxiao on the Lantern Festival. Yuanxiao and Tangyuan are similar in appearance, and many people mistakenly think that they are the same, but their production techniques are quite different. Tangyuan is made by kneading glutinous rice dough into stuffing, while Yuanxiao is made by cutting the stuffing into small pieces, throwing them into glutinous rice noodles and rolling them into big balls.

In today's western Henan, there is a custom of eating jujube cakes on the Lantern Festival, which is considered to have auspicious meaning. It is said that jujube cake was originally a royal cake in the Qing Dynasty, which was fragrant and sweet, and later became popular among the people, forming a holiday food.